


Someday

by HeadintheCloudsForever



Category: Notre-Dame de Paris | The Hunchback of Notre-Dame - All Media Types, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Menken/Schwartz/Parnell
Genre: Angst, Inner Dialogue, Love, Love Confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25184671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeadintheCloudsForever/pseuds/HeadintheCloudsForever
Summary: Madellaine reflects on her relationship with Quasimodo moments before her betrayal. A one-shot, told in 1st person POV, though I might make it longer in the future. An exercise in writing in the 1st person POV, something I've not really done yet. Please Read and Review if you enjoyed!
Relationships: Quasimodo/Madellaine
Kudos: 28





	Someday

In this life falling in love can be the worst of crimes, or so it seems. We exchange only glances, the lightest of touches, jokes, and warmth - no more. Yet for this, there is no forgiveness. Were this a different time and place we would-be lovers; instead, we are friends who love, nurture, and protect.

So, I'll be your "criminal," watched as such, feeling the eyes of the world. For him, I would take an arrow straight to the heart, so let them judge what they can't understand; I know who I am; I know who the cathedral’s bell ringer is, right to his core. This is love. You know you are in endless pain when you wake up one morning and realize that you are dead.

Buried and forgotten by those who are dear and close to you, but alive and kicking to strangers, a people who don’t give a damn about you. You know you will forever be in pain when you wake up in the morning with a jolt, to an emotionless face of a Master, who tells you nothing but to go out and steal and kill for him, to so cruelly take another human’s life of yours would be taken in more painful ways than you could possibly imagine it so.

You know pain when you go to sleep with it every night and wake up screaming in terror, a cry of anguish upon your lips, sweat beading on your brow. I knew when it started it would break me. I knew that, but I still obeyed and went along with Master’s commands. The choice was removed from me.

Sarousch’s easy smiles and gentle teasing’s strung along with my heart and blinded my eyes. I overlooked his veering lies and shady actions and glanced the other way when you enjoyed the company of other women more than mine, convincing myself that it was merely the green-eyed monster rearing its ugly head. But when you strayed, I knew for sure that you took me for a mindless fool. You made a mockery of my loyalty towards you and blamed me for your straying. Sarousch abused my innocent love and cut off the happy strings of my heart.

The Master is no longer worth my time or even a fleeting thought; our circus’ ringleader is nothing, but a bad story and I choose to only read good ones.

His words to me this morning ring in my eardrums, hours later, refusing to part from my thoughts.

_“If you stay with me, I'll kill you bit by bit. That's what I do to those who love me. Why I'm not altogether sure. But when you soar high, I'll drag you down. I'll stir up your anxieties just to be the one to soothe you and help you to find fault with anyone that competes for your attention. This is about as fair as I can be, it's your warning. So, if you're still here in the morning you've chosen that life and if you know me at all you'll realize this isn't a joke, éclair. You should have thought about whether you wanted this life or not before you stole from me, my little bon-bon. You know not to fail me.”_

I flinch inwardly and continue my way through the winding streets of the bustling marketplace, though my gaze is only fixated on one thing: the church.

The memory of that night flooded my mind like water rushing into a sinking ship. Waking to the sound of breaking glass. His hands tightening around my throat. The sound of me crying out for Sarousch to stop. The back of his hand across my face. It wasn't hard to recall. After all, this was my life; I run, he finds me, he gets his revenge, repeat.

Master Sarousch is a bit of a drinker when off-stage, you see. It’s how I get my bruises. And, theoretically, my self-induced scars. But what hurts worse is the insecurity. The internal brokenness that only a person exposed to abuse can experience. It’s like this: those mental scars are a tapering factor in the serenity of domestic life.

They cause agony that can only be seen on the inside. The pain that no one else sees because… well, no one else cares. Though one person does. And I might even be in love with him now, and that’s the worst part of all of this. That whatever image of goodness within me that he had seen is about to become shattered in less than a fraction of a second as soon as I can find him. The guilt at what I have done, what I am _about_ to do, sits not on my chest, but inside my brain. What I am to do for Sarousch, I cannot un-do. I can make amends in subtle ways, I suppose, but confession to any priest here in the cathedral is, of course, out of the question. Only in my silent prayers can I speak my heart to God and beg for His mercy, which I know that I do not deserve.

I do not deserve the love of Jesus Christ, but still, I cling to it and hang the shreds of my sanity on it. I pray that perhaps one day, I will feel removed from my sin, washed clean of it, but the guilt is a stain upon me, an ugly, putrid scar. I know that I have to believe in redemption and rebirth, to leave my deeds in the past and move on, but how can I do that when my entire world, the only one in my life, who has dared to show me an ounce of kindness, is bidding me do this? Sarousch, our circus’s troupe master and something of the ringleader, has ordered me to venture to Paris’s own Lady of Peace, Notre Dame herself, and, as he likes to call it, ‘wile and beguile’ the bell ringer that lives there, to seduce him.

Why? So, he can steal a bell of ‘extraordinary value.’ It seems unfair, cruelly unfair, that no matter how much I strive to be the woman my conscience wants me to be, it keeps taunting me with my failures. Each time the regrets re-emerge, I would spend time diligently analyzing them, hoping that this time, my mind would be satisfied with my self-professed remorse, but it never was, never is.

Like an unforgiving specter, I know it will be back tomorrow to haunt me all over again. If you were to ask me two weeks ago, how my life would have drastically changed, then I would have laughed at you and dismissed you without so much as a second thought, but now, here I am, about to betray perhaps the only person who has ever dared to show me an ounce of kindness, and what’s the worst part about all of this, is that I…I think I might even be in love with him. I tried to forget. Leave my past behind, ignore Sarousch’s threats. But I couldn’t do it when I saw him from a distance, melting in with the crowd, three days after we last saw each other. I almost did not recognize him as he strolled through the streets with Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers and his wife, La Esmeralda, and a happy smile that he never wore with me the last time we spoke.

But then again, the last time I spoke to the man, he was _furious_ with me.

Even now, as I dare to meet his gaze from across the way and step out of the shadows and into the light, and our gazes intertwine like they used to, once, the waves of regret hit me like a rock eroded by the sea. And as Notre Dame’s bell ringer froze and dared to meet my eyes with his, when he turned at last to face me, there was no trace of tears, as there had been the last time I tried to talk to him, not in his cobalt blue eyes or in track marks on his pallid, clammy face. His eyes were narrowed, rigid, and hard.

At that moment, I knew, he was already far away, even as they looked at me with such sorrow, I could hardly bear it. And I knew it was not because he was sad, but because I am no woman. I, nothing more than the thief who had stolen his heart before he had even known it was gone, and I took more than just his heart. I took all of him that night, made love to him like it was both of our last nights on this wretched earth.

And now…I’m just a shadow made of memories and regrets. And we both know why. Notre Dame’s bell ringer does not avert his gaze from mine. He does not look away, though I would not fault him if that were what he chose to do.

Once more, I am the enemy. These swings from most loved to most hated would be the end of me. His states had no greyscale, only the polar extremes existed. I draw in a deep breath; the burning hard stare would last only as long as it took him to think of the most brutally cutting thing that he could tear me down with. And after that, I could kiss anything breakable goodbye.

Which right now might just be my nose, it was so hard to tell and so pointless to run away again. His eyes are a knife in my ribs, the sharp point digging deeper. Where there had been love was an emptiness, but not in any vulnerable sense. Uncomfortable with the void, he had filled it with an emotion he was more at ease with - raw anger at my betrayal, at what I had done. The unmoving gaze was accompanied by deliberate slow breathing like he was fighting something back and losing. I left somebody who loved me despite my many, seemingly unforgivable faults.

I left him out of fear, of what Sarousch would do to him if I stayed with him. And now, I have no choice, or else he’ll kill him and force me to watch, and then he’ll steal away my life. The actions of what I initiated that night have consequences. Fear is an incredibly powerful influence; it is also a disguised demon. The words I spoke to him the morning after I loved him in the only way that I knew how, I knew that it felt like daggers were plunged straight into his chest, my actions venom, though he did not know it at the time. Not until the morning afterward when he caught me attempting to leave him before he had risen to ring for Lauds. Oh, how I wish that I could take it back.

I remember how it started, that night of the storm. I'm in love with him. He never leaves my mind, he's always there; mentally if not physically. It's just incomprehensible. He's my one stable force, my one stability in a world filled with chaos and I so desperately need that in my life. I love him so much for that. I’m in love with him and I can’t believe I’ve only just realized it.

This feeling is so strange; it stretches throughout my whole body. It’s overwhelming yet makes me feel complete. It has no bound nor length nor depth; it’s just absolute. It feels as though I’m in a dangerous fire, yet I’m completely safe at the same time. It feels as though someone’s given me peace. It feels as though my heart is dancing around my chest; and a hole, I was never aware was there, has been filled. I feel so light like I’m on top of the world yet my heart is constricting, and it feels as if there’s no oxygen in my lungs. It’s strange – frightening even – how you can go from someone being a complete stranger to then being completely infatuated by them and wondering how it ever was that you were able to live without them because you sure as hell couldn’t imagine being without them now.

I know we’re only young, and most people would consider me to be foolish and naïve, but it’s true when I say that I love him more than I could ever love myself. I remember how I traced his lip lightly with the tip of my finger. It pouted slightly, and I had such an urge to bite it, to kiss it, to wrap us up in a quilt and listen to our gentle breathing, watching the cotton ripple-like skipping stones and sharing crooked smiles.

His lip felt slightly chapped under my feather-light touches but I simply could not bring myself to give a damn. I gazed so intently at each divot of that lip as if it could map out ancient seas and life plans and tell me everything I don't know. And I don't want to look up. Because if I look up, I may find myself at the mercy of questioning eyes, pleading, begging to know what I was doing, and I'm not at liberty to say because I simply do not know. "Do I love you?"

I cannot form an answer with my lips because I am so focused on yours. Then the memory passes, my eyes seeing once more, my ears hearing the here and now. I wish I had known just how painful my fixation on your lip would be because loving the rest of you was torture, and sometimes I look back and wonder if I could have even stopped myself, warned myself away from such elegant heartbreak.

Would I have even listened? Or would the slight tickle of your breath expelling from that goddamn lip cause my words to stick to my throat, plastering themselves to my trachea and refusing to dispel into the palpable air? And the silence would have carried on forever and ever until we dispersed into dust and scattered ourselves between remains of atoms of an age long gone - until a time I might hear your voice echo through the nothing. With each word I whispered to him the night that I loved him, it sealed my fate and spelled the end of everything.

When he looked at me it was as if every ounce of breath was taken from my lungs floating into the air like midnight smoke. Every time he kissed me it felt like the world stopped, leaving just the two of us to wander the earth together. Every time he held my face between his hands it felt like he was untying all of my knots. Holding me for eternity in the arms I've grown so accustomed to. This is what falling in love was like, a story you never wanted to end. For so long I had longed for it, and now I can't bear to lose it - lose this thing that makes me feel so complete, and now I have. Life has killed my dream.

Combined, it was a brutal massacre of a loving heart never to be made whole again, destroying a loving heart. Pure and beautiful. Flawed perfection. This Earth holds many beauties, treasures beyond your wildest dreams, treasures that my own master, Sarousch, could never hope to steal away for himself.

But nothing compares to him.


End file.
